AM I THE MARRYING KIND?

A link this week instead of an entirely new post…

 

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) runs a First Person column on its news site, a chance for Canadians to offer personal perspectives on a news-related issue. An editor sent a call-out for pitches regarding an issue an individual has done a 180 on. I’m proud to say that my pitch regarding marrying as a gay man was accepted and published last week.

 

Here's the link to the article, “Marriage was never an option for me, but now, in my 60s, I find myself looking at rings”:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/first-person-marriage-180-9.6971448

  

EAVESDROPPING ON HOPE

I went swimming at a public pool beside a local high school on Friday. My normal swim day is Wednesdays so I was taken aback when, in the middle of my workout, my lane was closed down. This left only one lane for swimming laps—the slow, medium and fast swimmers merging into one. Let’s just say I was not happy. When I asked the lifeguard if this was going to be a regular thing, the poor guy shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” He’s the guy that just shows up to do his shift.

As it turned out, the slower swimmers got out of the pool, leaving the lane to just me and one other swimmer. Our speeds were comparable. I focussed on just swimming laps, getting my workout in. But around me, there was a lot of cheering and shouting. Each time I would turn to the side to get a breath while swimming freestyle, I could see a large group of people who looked student-aged standing fully clothed along the side of the pool. They seemed to be the ones causing the commotion.

It was only after I finished my last lap that I came up for air and saw what the ruckus was all about. This looked like a group of grade eight students, roughly 13 or 14 years old. They were cheering on their classmates who had constructed small, one-person boats out of cardboard. The objective was for the boat makers to paddle their craft from one end of the pool to the other while trying to keep their cardboard structures afloat. The scene was comical and chaotic at the same time.

 

Let’s just say there’s a reason freighters aren’t made from cardboard.

I got out of the pool and showered, then proceeded to get dressed in the changing room. While this was going on, two of the students who had taken unfortunate plunges in the pool, entered the locker room to change out of their wet clothes.

One of the boys said to the other that he’d forgotten to pack a towel. “What were you thinking?” said the other boy.

“I asked my dad to pack a bag for me,” came the reply.

The other boy lightly mocked his classmate. “What… You get mommy to pack for you?”

The boy without a towel took the question literally. His answer: “My mom is in India. “

“What?! How is that?”

At this point, I was tempted to butt in, even though I knew it was not my place. I wanted to give the towel-less kid (Boy 1) some support. I wanted to explain that, based on my years as a school principal working in diverse neighbourhoods, there had been a lot of families from India. It was common for one or more members to go back to India for one to two months at a time. This was practical. Why travel so far only to turn around again after a short visit?

Boy 1 handled things on his own. “My family’s complicated. “

“How so?”

“It’s a long story,” said the boy, perhaps wanting to dodge the explanation.

“I’ve got the time,” said his curious classmate. (This amused me.)

“It’s about surrogacy.”

“What’s that?” Boy 2 asked.

“It’s when you take an egg—”

“Oh! You mean a surrogate.”

 

“Yeah,” Boy 1 said. “My dads are gay.” This time there was no hesitation. 

As my back was to the two boys, I assume the boy without the towel simply nodded his head. Boy 1’s explanation was taken matter-of-factly. There was no ridicule or teasing about the fact his dads were gay. No need to ask questions. It just was what it was.

 

Instead, the conversation passed without a segue to a more involved negotiation about how to scrounge up enough money for the two of them to buy pizza for lunch.

I am heartened by this conversation. Despite regressive actions from conservative adults who happen to be in positions for making and changing laws, this younger, non-voting age group seems to take in stride differences related to LGBTQ identities. They are growing up with freer forms of expressing themselves and seeing their peers do the same. While some lawmakers are desperately trying to keep a lid on All Things Gay, messages, conversations and supports are out there, both online and in person. 

 

Fourteen years ago, I was pleased but skeptical when the book, It Gets Better, was published, with words of encouragement from notable people. I thought it was a noble project, but I wondered how it would be received by some 13-year-old who was actively being bullied or living in a household where anti-gay remarks were regularly made by parents. How does Hold on until you’re 20 help a young teen cope? When you’re 13, 20 feels like a lifetime away.

 

But now I can view the book over a longer trajectory. Since 2011, despite setbacks, things truly have gotten better. It’s not a time for complacency—there is more to be done and supposedly enshrined rights may still be volatile—but there is evidence that things are getting better for younger people, for both those who identify as LGBTQIA+ and those who don’t. One of my favourite sayings, You Be You, appears to have more traction with this age group. There will always be ways to put peers down but perhaps queerness is less likely to be the cause for ridicule. 

 

Seems I got more than just a workout from my trip to the pool.

“BOOTS” ON NETFLIX (A Review…of Sorts)

Okay, I’m a slow streamer. I don’t binge. It often takes two nights to watch a show, with a few “down” nights in between when I’m reading or doing something else instead. 

 

But I finished watching Boots on Netflix last night. 

 

I’m still not sure what to make of it. Like many original shows on Netflix, I shrugged through episodes. Things were just okay much of the time. It felt like how I watched Survivor back in the day. I always wanted to skip over the challenges and get to the whispered camp negotiations and the episode-ending tribal council. The challenges were just contrived nonsense with Jeff Probst yelling the occasionally cautionary remark. 

 

Same for Boots. I’ve already seen An Officer and a Gentleman. I know that military training involves a lot of camp activities on steroids (e.g., sink or swim; obstacle course; target shooting) and, instead of Jeff Probst, you’ve got drill sergeants who are built like tanks yelling at you. Belittling you. Saying things that should put them in HR if this were the corporate world. The berating gets old. It becomes an annoying buzz, like that of a mosquito swirling around your head in the dark at three in the morning. You listen; it’s grating; you want to smack the source of the noise to stop it.

 

Yeah, so I’m not the target viewer for Boots. A boot camp feels like too much testosterone, too much bravado, too much negativity. I’d have checked out even before having to put on the leather boots. But this, I was told online, was a gay show.

 

I tried to focus on the personalities. In my mind, the show comes down to three characters: Cam Cope, played by Max Heizer, his best friend Ray McAffey (Liam Oh) and Sergeant Sullivan (Max Parker). The rest of the characters are caricatures—the guy who just might be crazy, the guy who desperately wants to call home, the guy who’s too aggressive, the guy who alienates his mates. With all the focus on drills, there isn’t the opportunity to get to know the supporting cast. 

 

I’ve said the drill scenes carried zero interest for me, haven’t I?

 

Cope is a likable, passive guy—perfect for the “yes, sir” mindset of the military, but too scrawny to look like he’s got a shot at becoming a Marine. He’s also gay, a fact known only to his best friend who fully accepts him. This is 1990, by the way, a time when George H.W. Bush was president, a time before Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…a time of just Don’t. Being gay meant living in a fortified closet or a dishonorable discharge.

 

McAffey has daddy issues, his father having served in the military and raising his son with a stereotypical stoicism that might serve him well on the battlefield but doesn’t make a good parent. McAffey must excel. He must exceed. 

 

Sergeant Sullivan just has issues. Early on, he seems to zero in on Cope as someone unworthy of being a Marine. (“Why are you still here?”) SPOILER ALERT: He’s closeted and anytime his gayness is in danger of being detected, he becomes a masculine prick, taking things out on the recruits (or someone else). I found Max Parker a stunning screen presence—enough so that I scanned his Instagram and discovered he’s a gay Brit with a husband—but he’s got a challenging role, most of his scenes played out with his guard up, emotion limited to whatever we can see in his stunning eyes or in a slight cheek twitch. Every time there’s anything vulnerable about Sullivan to make the viewer like or relate to him, it’s followed by a scene to make you hate him. Is he a compelling character? Not really. I may have been too distracted by Parker’s good looks to appreciate any nuance in his portrayal of Sullivan.

 

Once you strip away all the drills of boot camp and the obligatory let’s-get-drunk and let’s-throw-food scenes, Boots boils down to: Why the hell would a scrawny gay guy want to be a Marine? Cope seems like a remarkably composed person. He’s been bullied but he seems like a survivor, albeit on the meek side. We’re told several times he’s “smart enough,” which my biased mind interprets as he can do so many other things. I was a meek, semi-closeted gay guy in 1990, too. Would enlisting and beating up another guy in a sanctioned fight have made me a better person, more of a man…someone who won’t be bullied anymore? Somehow I think I would have felt more ashamed. But then, I never aspired to be “more of a man.” Testosterone was never going to drive me. Sometimes coming out involves coming to terms with what you are and what you’re not. 

 

But Cope chose the Marines. Go figure. He’s a likable character. I cared what happened to him. That’s something. 

 

The most interesting character to me wasn’t a part of boot camp at all. The very talented Vera Farmiga is almost wasted as Cope’s single mom, Barbara. She herself is a caricature, a cluelessly bad mother in dowdy clothes, but Farmiga makes the most of the few scenes she’s in. I’d enjoy just watching a reel of her work in the show. I doubt I’ll tune in for what is set up for a second season, but I hope there will be more time to explore the mother-son relationship. If written right, that’s where the magic will be. 

 

Boots is based on the memoir, The Pink Marine, by Greg Cope White. I suspect I’d have enjoyed the book more but, no, I’m not going back and reading it now. I have a seemingly endless reading list and I’ve had my fill of military storytelling, thank you very much.